A broader critique of the American style of capitalism is offered in Juliet B. Schor's The Overspent American: When the Cost of Lifestyle Overtakes the Value of Life. Six years ago, Schor, a Harvard University economist, made a big splash with the best-selling The Overworked American. In it she lent academic credence to a gut feeling shared by many but not widely articulated at the time: that...

Calling a Halt to Mindless Change; A Plea for Commonsense Management, by British management consultant John Macdonald, is a much more traditional business book (for one thing, it's nonfiction). But it still shares with God Is My Broker a skepticism about business fads and one-stop solutions. Macdonald's beef is with the new-age management movements that have inundated us in recent years. He...

Let's start with the fiction. Yes, fiction. God Is My Broker: A Monk Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth purports to be the story of "Brother Ty" (it's short for tycoon), a man who abandons life too given to alcohol and Wall Street failure for the life of a monk. He joins a monastery in upstate New York. The monastery is on its last financial legs...

Webonomics: Nine Essential Principles for Growing Your Business on the World Wide Web by business writer Evan I. Schwartz is not so much a critique of the economy as a guidepost to its possible future. In case you've been dwelling in a cave of late, the Internet is hot. Sizzling hot. The mere ".com" in a company name or announced plans by an established concern to enter the Internet fray is...

The informed American investor or export-oriented corporate executive now knows more about the doings in Malaysia, Indonesia, and South Korea than he or she imagined possible a year ago. It's all due to the "Asian Contagion" or "Asian Flu," those snappy oversimplifications used to describe the various currency and macroeconomic woes afflicting these heretofore fast-growing...

You won't find much about mezzanine financing or business dinners in hip "Eurotrash" restaurants, but if you want a practical guide to self-employment, seriously consider If You're Clueless about Starting Your Own Business and Want to Know More. This is a good first book to read about going out on your own, even if it's not the last one you'll need. This straightforward workbook by...

Back in America, economic tidings have been a lot brighter. For one thing, a whole previously unknown venue for commerce seems about to blossom on the Internet. How did things change so quickly on a medium that a few short years ago seemed to have no commercial potential? You'll find some answers in the richly entertaining Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet, a...

If China is the potential economic power in Asia, then Japan is the current and long-standing champion. But this champion has been on the ropes for a number of years. The Japanese economy is stagnant, and its blend of government-industrial cooperation is under fire. It was only a decade ago that Japan's economy was the envy of the world. Many Americans openly lamented then that our system was...

Two biz books

Two follow-ups to investment-advice bestsellers are now in bookstores, preaching the virtues of long-term holdings of individual stocks. Each, in its own way, also takes issue with the conventional investment wisdom as it is doled out on Wall Street.Both You Have More Than You Think: The Motley Fool Guide to Investing What You Have by David and Tom Gardner and How to Retire Rich by James...

How to get started in a career when the very notion of career is changing is the subject of Work This Way by Bruce Tulgan. The author runs a think tank devoted to the work lives of those post-Baby Boomers labeled "Generation X." The media image is of "slackers," but if 20-somethings follow the career plans offered in this book, which involve self-starting, continual education and all-around...